Chapter Fifteen Ana #2
“Yes,” I answer. “This is what I do now.” I explain that I’m a lawyer who specializes in juvenile criminal defense.
And how Grace’s lawyer, Artis Frauhn, was in my eighth-grade science class and found me on Facebook years ago when we both went to law school.
Now he helps skaters get out of scrapes with the law, among other things.
“I don’t remember you ever speaking of him,” Kayla says. “But there’s a lot about that time that I’ve wanted to forget.”
She looks at me with round brown eyes that are so different without the makeup she once used to hide them.
“I know,” I tell her. “It was the same for me. I left two years after you did, and I never looked back.”
“Well,” she says with a shrug. “In some ways, it saved me. The family who took me in became my parents.” Kayla inhales deeply and straightens her back.
“They still live in town—the family they cobbled together—me, two of their own children, another foster kid. My mother is a therapist, and she knew what kind of help I needed. It saved my life—I’m a counselor now. At the high school.”
“I’m so happy you found your way out of there.”
“Yeah,” she whispers. Then I see her thoughts shift. “I heard about what happened with Indy. Were you still there at the time?”
“I was,” I say. “And for another year after that.”
“Oh.” I’ve surprised her. “I had no idea. You had so much promise. So did Indy. The two of you.” Now she smiles, remembering something. “IndyAna.”
My hands reach down and grip my thighs, digging in until it hurts.
“I’ve felt so much guilt over that night in the field—bringing you with us. You had no business being there.”
“None of us should have been there,” I tell her. “But you couldn’t have kept me away. You and Jolene and Indy—you were all I had.”
Kayla nods sadly. “You also had Dawn, though, didn’t you?”
I feel a jolt inside me. What does she mean by this? I wonder if she knows about the dinners, how Dawn would meet with me at her house to go over the programs. Maybe it wasn’t such a secret after all.
“That’s part of the reason I came to see you,” I say. “In the middle of this crazy storm and with not much time before they have to decide whether to charge Grace with Emile’s murder. Did Jolene tell you about the evidence they have?”
“Yes,” she says. “It’s so strange. She said Grace would have had to kill Emile in the field, then clean her skates, put them back in her locker, and get home to Avery as if nothing happened.”
“Right,” I agree. “Not many girls could do something like that.”
“And motive?” she asks. “Why would this girl want to kill him?”
I tell her about Shannon, and what she revealed about Emile’s plan to leave Dawn, pulling out some of her best skaters.
“Grace wasn’t one of them, apparently.”
Kayla echoes the same doubts I have about this as a motive. So then I tell her about the video and pull it up on my phone. As it plays, I watch her expression change as she sees the transformation on Grace’s face.
“Holy shit—now I get it, why she’s a suspect.”
“Right,” I tell her. “And if they show this to a jury, it’ll be hard to get them off the judgments they’ll make about her.”
Kayla hands back the phone and places her palms on the table. She pauses for a moment. And when she looks away, I fix my eyes on her like this might anchor me in the present.
“Why, though, are you here?” Kayla asks. “Like you said—in the middle of a storm and with so little time?”
I open my mouth to speak, then realize I don’t have an answer. Not one I want to say out loud.
“No one else understands that place,” I tell her. “The way we were on our own. The things that happened to us. And Dawn . . .”
Kayla looks confused. “Okay . . .”
“But Jolene doesn’t remember it the same way,” I continue. “She saw it as a great opportunity for Grace. To train at The Palace.”
Kayla boards her shoulders. “We all came to it differently,” she says. “I never expected to make the Olympics. Or even get close. I was just grateful to have a place to be where I could skate. And then, really, to be away from home.”
“And it didn’t bother you the way Dawn treated us? And the mothers in the stands? It didn’t make you angry?”
“It was a long time ago, Ana. Shit happens to people,” she says.
I think about Kayla and Jolene, friends all these years. And how I’ve seen this place as a black hole I could never go near again.
Kayla searches for something to give me. “It was totally fucked up,” she says. “That fucking doctor. And Dawn, trying to make us afraid of her. I wish I’d killed her that day.”
Now I look at her curiously. “What day?”
“The day—after what we tried to do to her.”
“Kay—I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“We never told you?” she asks.
“Told me what?”
She pauses, searching for memories.
“Jesus—we never told you.”
“What?” I ask again, my mind scanning images from those first few days after I arrived. There was so much to learn, but I always assumed it was all there. Laid out for me. Like a textbook I just needed to read.
“Fuuuuuck,” she says, shaking her head. “Something happened, Ana. Before we ever knew you. Do you remember how angry I always was?”
I nod. “I thought it was because of your childhood—in New York.”
She laughs in one short burst. “Well, that did cut some rough edges. My grandmother—no wonder my mother ended up in jail. Never got her shit together. But it wasn’t that.”
I see her that night in the field. And then the aftermath. The anger that followed. But she’s right—it was there from the day I arrived.
“What then?” I ask. “What happened before I got there?”
She draws a long breath. Then tells me a part of the story I never knew.